A week in security: malware targets banks and defence firms

Targeted malware has been aimed at various organisations this week

This week has been dominated by yet more cyber criminal activity targeting the banking and defence industries, as well as efforts by the government and vendor communities to counter these increasingly prevalent and sophisticated threats.

First up came a warning from security vendor G Data of a new threat to MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. The firm's research found a recent surge in spam and phishing sites that link to the services, as well as a wave of seemingly "endless" fake friend requests.

Adding to these woes is a rogue application that promises to tell users who is blocking them, but in fact is a lure to a scam.

Security vendor Trusteer said it has spotted a malware attack that compromises user credentials by creating a fake bank log-in page and then uses those credentials to perform an 'authorised' monetary transfer.

The company warned UK banking customers to beware of the new threat, which is being spread through multiple infection methods, including web-based exploits and spam email attachments.

Meanwhile, researchers at Symantec Hosted Services uncovered a new attack on defence contractors. The operation involved compromising the site of one firm and using the hacked site to host a malware attack on another contractor. The sophistication and complexity of the attack was especially noteworthy, said the firm.

On the other side of the fence, positive noises came from the government this week in the form of security minister Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones.

Speaking at the Homeland and Border Security 2010 conference in London, Neville-Jones argued that cyber security and information assurance are essential to the UK's economic prosperity, and pledged that the government will work closely with the private sector on developing and implementing cyber security policy.

At the same event, Sir Ian Andrews, chairman of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), warned the security community to underestimate cyber crime at its peril.

Andrews said that, although cyber security is "the new kid on the block" when it comes to threats to UK national security, the fact that it is borderless and not connected to any jurisdictional system means that Soca has had to resort to disruptive tactics to make a difference.

Perhaps heeding Sir Ian's words, security vendor McAfee stepped up its outreach programme this week by inviting members of Soca and the Met's Police Central eCrime Unit to its labs to receive expert training.

The move to train UK law enforcement specialists is part of the McAfee Initiative to Fight Cybercrime, and came partly as a recognition of the fact that many agencies are poorly resourced

Finally this week, Adobe released patches for its Acrobat and Reader software, while Microsoft revealed that over 10,000 PCs have now been hit by attacks exploiting a publicised flaw in the Windows Help and Support Center.

The attack was disclosed by Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy, but security experts were quick to denounce his actions in disclosing before Microsoft had time to develop a fix.